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Install BibleWorks 9 in Ubuntu Linux with Wine

I'm not sure this is the correct forum for this, but I thought it might be helpful to document how I got BibleWorks 9 running reliably in Ubuntu Linux using Wine. Rather than putting a long post up here, I have a blog entry that may be useful:

I'm not sure this is the correct forum for this, but I thought it might be helpful to document how I got BibleWorks 9 running reliably in Ubuntu Linux using Wine. Rather than putting a long post up here, I have a blog entry that may be useful:

it should work fine. I am running exactly the same setup (Ubuntu Saucy 64bit) without the need for IE7 32bit, thanks to the wonders of gecko! Also, mono takes care of the .net portion of some Windows Applications. Beware, WINE 1.7 is the Beta release, but I currently have BW9 running flawlessly using Wine 1.7.16, and am loving it so far.

Although I am now noticing that the Copy to Clipboad function does not work and the Editor is also non-functional.

Yeah. You may also notice that there are no tooltips. While .NET is supported by mono, it is not .NET, therefore some of the functions are not perfect. It is unfortunate, but one of the many quirks of WINE. Not everything works as well as it does natively.

To be honest, I have abandoned BW9 in WINE, but only because I have recently aquired Lightroom to pursue my photography more professionally. I now run BW9 inside of a VirtualBox, which believe it or not, Windows, LR5 and BW9 all run better in a sandbox. I can give Windows the min. RAM required for LR (4GB), multitask with BW9, and it runs comparatively to when I was running Windows natively with double the RAM on the same machine. Strange, but true.

Just to add my own experience for any watching this thread: I have BWks 9 running under Ubuntu 14.04, and BWks 7 under Linux Mint 13 (LTS), both with Wine via PPA. Both run perfectly, so far as I can tell. And I've been using BWks since 3.5!

So it can can be done, and for me it's a good thing, as I've been Windows-free for a few years.

Moving up to BW10 with Ubuntu 14: Main menu does not appear

(I reply here because I have never found a way in which to submit a new query in BW fora. May 'junior' members are not allowed to request help?)

After installing BW10 under Ubuntu 14 Linux both on my desktop and on my Chromebook, the installation is running well but for this minor issue: the BW10's main menu does not appear. I presume that it has something to do with Ubunitu Unity's invasive tool bar technology.

If I find a solution on my own, then I shall return here with a reply.

Gonna try it on Mint 13, 17, Fedora 22 and PCLinuxOS

Thinking out loud here about the variables...

All those distros are hybrids of Ubuntu and Debian, except Fedora. I've been using Mate and KDE (PCLinuxOS has all five desktop modes, you pick what you want at signin), but it seems like KDE would work better.

If you want to make onscreen videos of what you're doing, I just learned Kazam is a great little tool. I have old Logitech Communicate STXs hooked up to my monitor to record my voice (camera not used), and it's plug-and-play with those (the webcams cost maybe $6-14 in Amazon or Ebay). The sound is much better than the mic in Windows! (Listen to the sound in this Mint 17 video, my first made with Kazam.) So now you can make videos of what you're studying and share them, post them to Youtube (720p), etc.

I run Linux exclusively from an external hard drive or stick via regular install, specifying them instead of the internal hard drive or partition. If including Bibleworks, the best size external drive would be maybe a 250 GB Elements or GoFlex (or bigger); for stick, the largest I've seen is 128=115GB Kingston 3.0 Data Traveller in Amazon (about $44, right now).

The 10 steps to permanently install to external hard drive or stick, are here(green shaded section at bottom of page, my nickname). This is not the same as LiveUSB: there is no casper partition, so you always have persistence up to the full capacity of your external drive or stick (minus swap file as you or your default installation designates). So you can carry your computer in your pocket, and never harm the innards of the machine you use, no vm, no dual boot.

So one may plug the distro into any machine, make an XP machine surf-safe, but best of all the underlying programs ON the Windows machines, can be accessed by the same Wine command you use to invoke a program Wine installed. Or, right-click and pick the Wine option to invoke an executable in your Windows directory, directly.

Bibleworks installs its files to more than one directory, and accesses more than one directory when it runs; ergo Kotts' great instructions on how to install it. However, older Win programs and almost all DOS programs are wholly contained in one directory, so could be run in situ of your Windows directory.

Example: Win95 programs like Plus! for creating desktop theme colors and fonts, fontsizes can be invoked via right-click Wine Program Loader; even if the executable is on some other stick. All I do is right-click on 'Themes.exe' and select 'open with Wine program loader'. It's great, since then I'm not stuck with grey backgrounds and barely readable type. So then I pick some already-created Win95, Win98, XP theme and select that its colors and fonts be used. Happens instantly.

Now this matters, as it affects Bibleworks colors, fonts, fontsizes and themes, too. Well, Bibleworks 9 and prior, I don't know about 10. Easy to change.

So probably you or someone you know has an old Win95 or Win98 OS disks or computer: on it under the 'Program Files' will be 'Plus!'. It was a freebie coming with Windows back in the day. Affects colors, fonts, fontsizes in MS Office 2003 and prior, and (Wine's emulation of) Internet Explorer.

So too, all those other Windows programs which run standalone like notepad.exe, wordpad.exe, paint.exe, etc. You can either leave them as is on your Windows machine and right-click to invoke them; or, duplicate their same file structure under your .wine folder in Linux (i.e., notepad.exe is in Windows/system32, so you create a 'system32 folder with notepad.exe in it, and put that folder underneath your .wine/drive_c/Windows folder). Then right-click to invoke.

Example: right now I'm copying my entire Linux Mint home directory using ImgBurn, which is only on my XP hard drive. I just right-clicked on Imgburn.exe (in my actual XP Windows Programs Files directory), and selected the Wine Program loader. All the other Linux burners don't work well at navigating directories, or they make you type in the source and destination, etc.

Conversely, a Linux program called gextracticons will actually read/edit/convert for use in Linux, almost any Windows cursor or icon you have. Mint will just do it with almost any graphical file: just right-click on Icon Properties, then on the icon, and you get a file menu you can navigate to your Windows directories.

This matters, as Bibleworks gives you the option of changing icons and doing a lot of customized stuff, also for opening a file in Wordpad or Notepad.

And you don't want to use the default wine cursor. Linux cursors get switched to Windows cursors in Win programs: so to change to Windows cursors, copy from Win98, XP or Win7 a program called 'mousex32.exe' and also put all your mouse cursors you'll want in your Windows/Cursors file. That exe calls on that Windows file, so if you'll put the exe under wine, then copy the cursor folder to the 'Windows' file under .wine, too.

For more complex programs which use few but known multiple Windows directories, you can create folders with those names under .wine in Linux, then copy the files belonging within, to those directories. This, in lieu of a direct install: for sometimes Wine can't install a Windows program.

DOSbox works too. The trick is to size the window properly, which is explained in the dosbox-0.74.conf file in the .dosbox directory after you install it (software package managers usually carry it, or you can download it from dosbox or in terminal).

I need almost all the above tools when using Bibleworks. (Dos windows are needed for older word processors which are fast and sometimes better than the new ones.)

Finally, Crossover might be able to do more than all this. I bought it, but don't yet know how much more it can do. So maybe the BW10 menu problem gets solved if you use Crossover rather than Wine. The program has a small cost per month, six months, year so you can decide how much to pay at first and test it. You can also get it for Linux on a trial basis.

As your posts helped me, I hope this info might at some point help you!

get BW10 main menu to work with wine

(I reply here because I have never found a way in which to submit a new query in BW fora. May 'junior' members are not allowed to request help?)

After installing BW10 under Ubuntu 14 Linux both on my desktop and on my Chromebook, the installation is running well but for this minor issue: the BW10's main menu does not appear. I presume that it has something to do with Ubunitu Unity's invasive tool bar technology.

If I find a solution on my own, then I shall return here with a reply.

Hi,

Unity is not the problem. I have wine 1.7 installed in ubuntu 15.04 and wine 1.7.44 in manjaro, and both have this issue. However, by chance I discovered that in BW10 if you hit the alt shortcuts, eg alt + t for Tools or alt + v for View, the main menu partially appears. If you go to the main menu bar with your mouse, everything appears. Then you can go to View > Toolbar > initialize main tool bar, and that appears again. The main menu disappears again eventually, but at least you can access it again and again with the alt shortcuts. You can get the sub-menus working this way as well, eg press alt + l after pressing the lexicon icon to access the lexicons in the menu of the window that pops up.

By the way, this seems to work just as well in gecko, as I have not installed IE7 this time around.